Slieve Donard

Slieve Donard stands at the edge of the Mourne Mountains in County Down, Northern Ireland. It is the highest mountain in the region, rising 850 metres above the Irish Sea near the town of Newcastle. Two lesser peaks, Millstone Mountain and Crossone, lie on its seaward side. The Mourne Wall climbs its western and southern slopes, ending at a small stone tower on the summit. Two ancient burial cairns mark the highest point, one a Neolithic passage tomb, the other a Bronze Age multiple-cist cairn. The mountain overlooks Dundrum Bay and the coast stretches from Belfast Lough to Dublin Bay. The mountain holds deep mythological and historical meaning. Irish legends link it to figures such as Boirche and Slángha, while Saint Donard later made it his hermitage. Pilgrims climbed it yearly until the 1830s, originally for the harvest festival of Lughnasadh. In 1826, Royal Engineers camped on the summit for four months to map Ireland, damaging the cairns in the process. The Mourne Wall, built between 1904 and 1922, crosses fifteen mountains including Slieve Donard. A visitor follows the Glen River from Donard Forest to the Mourne Wall, then climbs to the summit. The path is steep and eroded in places, but a stone route now helps on the steepest sections. From the top, views stretch across the coast to Belfast Lough thirty miles north and Dublin Bay ninety miles south. The remains of the Great Cairn and Lesser Cairn lie near the tower, their stones scattered by time and weather. The summit also holds a brass plaque remembering a man struck by lightning in 2006.